Increased stuttering?

[wishingchair]

Hi - my dd is 3 next month and has started stuttering a lot more at the start of a sentence. She used to do it a bit before, particularly if she was tired. But since Thursday it's a lot. For example, she'll say "da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-daddy can you pass me xxxxx".

I talked to her about it and if we say (innocently - don't want to give her a hang up) "sorry I didn't hear you could you repeat it please", she'll generally say it fine. I told her it's because she's got so many words to say they all want to come out at once and sometimes get stuck so to take a deep breath and she does that now and puts her hand in front of her mouth as if to slow herself down. A couple of times she's cried and said she can't say it.

And all this since Thursday!

I know one of her friends does this and has done for a while. Is it part of her normal development? Is it learned from her friend? Or should I be worried. She has very fluent speech and has a big vocab so I think it's strange it's started now.

Any thoughts would be welcome!

My dd did this and the HV referred her to speach therapy but by the time the appointment came through it had stopped and we never went. I think it was a developmental thing. It always seemed that her mind was working faster than her mouth and she was trying to rush. I think it was hard as well having a twin as she was always competing to get her sentence out before being interupted.
We tackled it by always getting down to her level when she talked and making it clear that there was no rush to speak (ie not looking as though we had something else to do). We would hold our palm up to the other dd if she tried to interrupt (ie wait - not we'll whack you !!). Eventually she got over it.
I've known friends have similar problems with their kids.
I would ask your doctor or hv for advice but try some things yourself. Hope it helps.

my DS2 (2.5) started doing this suddenly. I mentioned this to his nursery teacher and she said that they had a new kid who stuttered quite a lot and about 5 or 6 kids has copied her. We totally ignored it, finished his sentences when we got bored with it and now less than a month ago it has totally disapeared.